Motion Graphics

We like to make it move.

It is the colorist job to find the right look for the client, but what does it take to hire an online colorist. How would you trust their workflow and time table for your project?

There are several sites you could visit to find a suitable online colorist for your project to grade. Getting an experienced and expert colorist would cost high for a satisfying performance, well if you’re working on a big budget why not have the best. Sometimes you might also get a low-cost colorist then achieve the look, on which there are tons of look for your video. In line with these, it’s always best to have basic knowledge when it comes to color grading.

Here are some basic notes to Ponder:

1. Avoid overexposed footage’s if you want a detailed look for your colorist. Overexposed footage’s lessen the capability to enhance a look. Vice versa with too dark footages or underexposed (note colorist could still make a day to night look).

2. Show a reference look for your colorist or better yet gather previous works from their color reels.

Contrast – a term referring to how far the whitest whites are from the blackest blacks. If the peak white is far away from the peak black, the image is said to have high contrast. With high contrast, the image is very stark and very “contrasty”. If the two are very close to each other, the image is said to have poor, or low, contrast and looks gray.

Exposure – the quantity of light

Tint – a hue that has been lighted in value from its normal value. Pink is a tint of red.

Luminance – brightness level. (coming from the left to the right depicts how a color ranges when luminance increases)

Saturation – the intensity of the color (no luminance is increase just boosting color)

Value – darkness or lightness of the color

Harmony – right usage of color in the image

Highlights, Midtones, Shadow – highlights is the brightest whites of the image, shadow is the deep blacks, in between highlights and shadows is the midtones which has less light than the highlight and are close to the range of 50%.

4. Dive in to their software to further understand their workflow. You don’t have too really know everything about their color grading tools because it’s their job to do it for you. The essence of understanding the basic is to merely know the capability of your colorist. Sometimes little details could really make great impact.